So I bought a cheap batch of 4GB USB sticks off Amazon to make a number of bootable sticks for various tools (GParted, Dariks Boot and Nuke, Clonezilla etc.) for computers that don't have CD-ROM drives, and some 8GB ones for Windows 7 and 8 installers.

I've wasted the best part of a day trying to get the damn things to boot, I've tried a few tools such as the Windows 7 USB/Download tool and Rufus, tried booting on a number of computers and tried all the options in Rufus and nothing. I found a Kingston USB drive in the cupboard, tried that with Rufus and it booted first try!

I thought it was all down to the formatting that made USB sticks bootable, but it looks like there's something at the hardware level too. Is there something I should be looking for when buying USB sticks for this purpose, or should I just make sure they say bootable on the packaging?

Does anyone have any recommendations on a brand of bootable USB sticks?

I feel your pain as I went through the same experience a couple of weeks ago. I tried quite a few different usb keys/usb caddies and it appeared that some show up as USB "plug and play storage device" whereas others show up as USB hard drives. Most of the PCs I tested only worked with the "plug and play storage device" type of keys, but I think it also depends on the BIOS of the PC.

I had some 8GB/16GB HP metal USB2 keys and they seemed to work really well, but not sure if you can still get the same ones. Unfortunately the much faster SanDisk USB3 16GB didn't work as well. Not very universal after all!

Had a customer here a while back that was trying to make a drive for an update process, not a bootable utility but a device that was all touchy feely about flash drives. He couldn't get it to work and was sure it was my process that was failing. I told him to go out and find the absolute cheapest flash drive he could find and to format it a few times before use, It worked on the first try.

I had ordered several sandisk cruizers here a while back to make a live win7 bootable, none of them worked. The no name cheap freebies i had laying around work like a dream.

what OS you want to boot from the USB sticks? Personally I never had any issues with any USB stick to boot from it.I'm using Pendrivelinux to prepare the bootstick. Even Windows 7 / 8 bootsticks can be made, just scroll down almost to the end of the Distro-List and then select Windows and point to the ISO image on your PC.

If you have NTFS file system on the stick, don't tick the "format with Fat32" option and simply keep NTFS. You can even create the "persistant file" within NTFS formated sticks needed for Linux Bootstick to store some chages or downloaded tools. Yesterday I created a Windows 7 boot stick for a recovery of a broken system partition but this time I needed to reformat in FAT32 to boot from it - never happened with Linux boot sticks.

Hint: deactivate your Virus Scan during the creation of the Stick, the process will create an "autorun.inf" which would be blocked by your Scanner. Afterwards, swicth your Virus Scanner back on.

... Unfortunately the much faster SanDisk USB3 16GB didn't work as well....

Have you tried to boot from USB 3.0 port but still havin other USB 2.0 ports in the same machine? Normally you can boot from USB 3.0 if the BIOS is not prepared for this. I had this issue with a Dell Precision with both USB 3.0 and 2.0 - only bootable ports were the USB 2.0 ports of this "laptop".

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what OS you want to boot from the USB sticks? Personally I never had any issues with any USB stick to boot from it.I'm using Pendrivelinux to prepare the bootstick. Even Windows 7 / 8 bootsticks can be made, just scroll down almost to the end of the Distro-List and then select Windows and point to the ISO image on your PC.

If you have NTFS file system on the stick, don't tick the "format with Fat32" option and simply keep NTFS. You can even create the "persistant file" within NTFS formated sticks needed for Linux Bootstick to store some chages or downloaded tools. Yesterday I created a Windows 7 boot stick for a recovery of a broken system partition but this time I needed to reformat in FAT32 to boot from it - never happened with Linux boot sticks.

Hint: deactivate your Virus Scan during the creation of the Stick, the process will create an "autorun.inf" which would be blocked by your Scanner. Afterwards, swicth your Virus Scanner back on.

Best regardsJoerg

I'm wanting to make the following as bootable USB drives:

* Windows 7 Pro 32 bit installer

* Windows 8.1 Pro 64 bit installer

* Dariks boot and nuke

* Gparted

* Bart PE

* FDisk (like the floppy disk that came with Windows 8)

From what I can see on the Pen Drive Linux site, the Windows boot disks are just created with Rufus? Which already failed on the cheap drives.

Initial problem is to make a stick itself bootable; Yumi is able to boot several OSes from one-and-the-same stick. This could be seen as Part 2 or Part 4 of the challange to make a stick bootable, so called Advanced Boot capabilities if the stick is bootable at all :-)

That's what I meant with "additional confusion" - can't find the correct english expression of "muddy the waters" ;-)

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Initial problem is to make a stick itself bootable; Yumi is able to boot several OSes from one-and-the-same stick. This could be seen as Part 2 or Part 4 of the challange to make a stick bootable, so called Advanced Boot capabilities if the stick is bootable at all :-)

That's what I meant with "additional confusion" - can't find the correct english expression of "muddy the waters" ;-)

Ah, I see what you mean. I just look at it as an automated tool to get the job done easily and simply.

All of the above on one stick? Try Yumi, best recommendation - as Larry wrote;Each one on a single stick, try normal UUI from Pendrive - as I wrote. Never had any issues - beside FAT32 format yes/no which should to be tested depending on the ISO image.

as far as for windows install why not use the awesome windows usb/dvd download tool? Just need valid iso image and it will work. Fyi if your iso are bad it will fail in almost all software. Ask me how i know...